


duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, hand grenade

by luckyfilbert



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Captain America: The First Avenger, Five And One, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, there are lots of time jumps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1935018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckyfilbert/pseuds/luckyfilbert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Did it hurt?" Bucky asks, even as he gasps at each step. And then, stumbling down the hall, swaying beside Steve's even gait, "Is it permanent?" </p><p><em>Yes,</em> Steve wants to tell him. And <em>I'm not sure, I hope, maybe,</em> and <em>God, Bucky, what happened;</em> he wants to wrap him in his arms and bury his face in his chest and never let go of him again, but he's too big for that now, and Bucky looks like he might collapse at any sign of tenderness. So he keeps a soldier's march next to Bucky and barely answers. Army discipline got him through that torture and if he can just hold onto that a little longer, it'll be the only thing that gets him out.</p><p>______</p><p>Five times Steve comforted Bucky, and one time Bucky comforted Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, hand grenade

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a prompt on tumblr; the original post is [here](http://thewinterfilbert.tumblr.com/post/91234030684/whoops-i-forgot-about-the-post-tws-part-of-this). Titling credit goes to my roomie.
> 
> This was my first time doing a five and one and I really enjoyed it.

1.

“Pick on somebody your own size!” the kid yells. He hurls a stone and just misses the last of the boys. They speed around the corner and the stone clatters off the alley wall. As the last footsteps die away, the kid slumps against a trashbin and wraps an arm around his ribs.

Steve lowers his trashcan lid shield and steps forward. “What’s wrong with you?”

"Less’n what’s wrong with you," the kid spits, sliding down to the pavement. 

Steve straightens his shoulders and puffs out his curled chest as far as he can. “Nothing wrong with me.” 

"Yeah?" the kid pants. He looks pointedly at the bruises already showing around Steve’s elbows and eye. "Well, you’re welcome. Next time I’ll just let you die maybe."

Steve sniffs. “Wasn’t gonna die.” 

The kid snorts, then looks closer at Steve. “D’they hurt your shoulder?”

"No." Steve shrugs the higher shoulder. "Just like that." A pause. "Did they hurt your shoulder?"

The kid moves his arm carefully. Steve sees the moment he forces back his grimace into something like a frown. “Maybe.”

"C’mon." Steve holds out a hand. The kid eyes it blankly. "My mom’s a nurse. She’ll fix you up." 

"Don’t need fixing."

"Yeah you do. An’ I need a walk home. So are you coming or not."

2.

“Busking?”

"It’s not busking, Buck." Steve walks across their cramped room, retrieving paper and pencils and tucking them into his bag. He slings it onto his right side. "Just drawing. If they like ‘em, they buy ‘em. They get the picture and I get the practice. And the money."

"Not much money," Bucky mutters, poking at the pile of coins Steve’s left on the table. "An’ you’ll be working right down on the streets, with all the cars and smoke. What if your lungs clog up again? What if you don’t hear something coming? Or—"

"Bucky." Steve stops him with a look, but at Bucky’s defeated expression he takes an unconscious step towards him. He sighs and closes the gap, straightening Bucky’s collar as an excuse. "This’ll be fine," he says to Bucky’s lapels. "Better than that factory job—no boss, so if I get tired I can just leave. Won’t have to work when I’m sick anymore." He smooths the fabric over Bucky’s shoulders and picks at a loose thread to avoid meeting his eyes. "I won’t be raking in the dough like you—" that gets a smile— "but it’ll be enough for food, and you can do rent, and we’ll be all set. Yeah?"

He does meet Bucky’s eyes then. They’re warm and if not entirely free from worry, at least calmer than they’ve been in days. “Yeah,” Bucky agrees, and Steve squeezes his arms and smiles.

3.

Bucky’s already home when Steve shoulders through the door, sitting on the floor against their one bed. That’s unusual. More unusual is the bottle grasped loosely in his hand.

He salutes Steve with the bottle. “You are looking at an officer of the US Army.”

Steve pauses against the doorjamb, catching his breath from the stairs. “You enlisted?”

Bucky takes a swig. “Finally had time. Boss wanted us for another hour but I told ‘im, gotta do my bit, gotta fight Fritz.”

Steve grins at him, but he’s seen the headlines. They opened the draft earlier that week. Bucky must have been one of the first.

Bucky swallows again and looks into the middle distance, and Steve looks at Bucky looking at nothing, and wonders why he feels like nothing inside. He knew this was coming. He knew Bucky would be leaving, another American hero. Hell, he even tried to convince Bucky to enlist, until his repeated excuses made it clear that he wouldn’t be talked into it. Steve thought he was ready. But he hadn’t expected it to feel like this.

Steve pushes off the doorjamb and walks over to Bucky. He kneels with his right side, his good side, next to Bucky and wraps an arm around his tense shoulders. As he pulls his head against the hollow of his chest, Bucky gives a shuddering breath.

"Don’t wanna go." His voice is muffled in Steve’s coat. "Don’t wanna fight for this—goddamn country. This country don’t give a damn about us, Steve, they never cared if we die in the fucking street and now they ‘spect us to fight for them—die in some other country’s damn fucking street—"

"It’ll probably be a field." Steve says lightly. He eases the bottle out of Bucky’s hand and sets it on the floor behind him. He rubs his hand over Bucky’s back, rests his chin on Bucky’s head. Pretends not to notice the tears soaking into his coat. "Most battles happen in fields. If you die in the street I’ll know you got really fucking lost. The great Barnes sense of direction strikes again."

Bucky coughs a laugh. “A field. Never even seen a field, Stevie, what’m I gonna do dying in one.”

"You could try not dying in one," Steve offers. Bucky snorts but holds him tighter. 

Steve rubs his shoulder absently. “It’s just fighting, Buck. You’re good at fighting. How many times have you gotten me out of a scrape? It’s just like that, you’re just getting the whole country out of a scrape.”

"Told you, I don’t care—"

"Well, what about parts of the country? The bridge, or our corner on the docks. Or your girl—Betty, right? You go fight for all that."

"None of that’ll notice if I come back or not."

Steve chews the inside of his lip. “I will.” 

Bucky pulls his head back to look at him, eyes damp.

Steve shrugs. His chest is tight with Bucky’s leaving and clogged with all the words that won’t. “I want you to come back,” he says. “I don’t want you dying in a field.”

"Yeah. Yeah, okay, yeah." Bucky sniffs and wipes a hand over his face. He slides out of Steve’s arm and Steve lets him, a little regretfully, stretching his legs out as feeling prickles back into his feet. Bucky nods several times, almost to himself. "Yeah. They don’t pay half bad, the army. And I’ll make sure you get it, you’ll have enough for everything. And when I come back—they’re sayin’ they’ll send us to college, Steve." His eyes light up, despite everything. "I’ll go to school and get a good job with good money, no more of this shit. We’ll get a nice big place to live, someplace where the air’s clear for you, and you can work on your drawing and we won’t ever hafta freeze or starve again." He gives Steve a sideways smile—it’s a bare trace of his normal grin, but it’s something. "The US of A can go fuck itself, and we’ll make out like kings." 

He looks almost triumphant, like he’s forgotten that there’s an ocean and a war and several chances of death between them and that happy dream. Steve doesn’t remind him.

4.

“I thought you were smaller.”

Bucky’s voice is barely a gasp, but his smile fills his face and sets his eyes alight. Steve wants to wrap him in his arms and bury his face in his chest and never let go of him again—is a little surprised by how much he wants that—but he’s too big for that now, and Bucky looks like he might collapse at any sign of tenderness. So, “I joined the army,” Steve tells him, and hauls him up.

"Did it hurt?" Bucky asks, even as he gasps at each step. And then, stumbling down the hall, swaying beside Steve’s even gait, "Is it permanent?" 

_Yes,_ Steve wants to tell him. And _I’m not sure, I hope, maybe,_ and _God, Bucky, what happened,_ but he keeps a soldier’s march next to Bucky and barely answers. Army discipline got him through that torture and if he can just hold onto that a little longer, it’ll be the only thing that gets him out.

5.

Army discipline only lasts so long before it begins to crack. The Commandos are in the SSR offices—repurposed basements, really—discussing attack strategies on Schmidt’s strongholds, when Steve sees Bucky tense. His eyes frost over, staring at nothing, like they had that day when he told Steve he was going to war. And Steve told him everything would be okay.

"Recess," Steve says, standing up from the table. "We’ll reconvene in fifteen minutes."

Colonel Phillips, standing under the map, pauses mid-gesture. “Rogers, do I need to remind you the order of rank in this office?”

"I need a minute to—confer with my sergeant." Steve stops at Bucky’s chair and puts a hand on his shoulder. He hopes it doesn’t draw too much attention to Bucky’s state, or that nobody else can read it like he can.

Phillips grunts and waves a hand, and Steve pulls Bucky out of the room.

"Sorry, Captain," Bucky drawls as Steve hurries him down the hall. "Didn’t mean to embarrass you ‘front of everyone."

Steve bites back a retort and leads Bucky into a deserted room. He swings the door shut behind them. And then he stands in front of Bucky, a little pathetically, not sure what to do.

Bucky saves him from indecision. He takes a step forward, then two, then grabs a handful of Steve’s jacket. He leans his head into Steve’s chest, and Steve brings his arms up to circle him.

"This never used to work." Bucky hides his face in Steve’s shoulder. Steve can feel him swallow a sob. "What happened to my little Stevie?"

Steve tightens his hold and buries his face in Bucky’s hair. It’s longer and dirtier and slicker, and there are roots of gray that were never there before. His voice chokes around the reciprocal question, _what happened to my Bucky_. “I shouldn’t’ve let this happen,” he finds himself saying. “I should’ve come for you sooner. I should’ve—I should’ve broken your leg the minute you got your draft papers.”

"Enlistment," Bucky mumbles.

"I could’ve hidden you upstate," Steve goes on. "You’d’ve lived in the woods and mooched eggs off farmhouses."

Bucky smiles into Steve’s jacket. “And where are you in all this?”

"Oh, I’d still be here," Steve says lightly. "Fighting Nazis so they can’t make it to Ithaca, or wherever I store you."

"Ithaca?" Bucky punches his chest. "You left me in Ithaca with a broken leg?"

"Gotta make sacrifices to save the world, Buck," Steve says, but his stomach twists. Sacrifices. Bucky’s made too many of those, more than he ever should’ve had to. If Steve had just—if he hadn’t— He almost doesn’t say it, but, "Maybe all I needed to save was you."

"Nah." Bucky’s response is immediate and warm. "Not my Steve."

Steve looks down at Bucky. He cards a hand through Bucky’s hair, feels him relax against him. And he knows. It should have been enough. And maybe he set things out of balance by daring to want more, to mean more, to be more than a boy in Brooklyn with the boy he loved. But he couldn’t change that. Even if his scrawny Brooklyn self, who feels more like a piece out of a different life with every day, knew what he knows now—he would have gone with Erskine. He would have sent Bucky to war. They’ve done too much good already. He couldn’t not.

"Bucky, I’m sorry." He holds him closer, fiercely. "I’m sorry I couldn’t stop—couldn’t get to you sooner. But I’ll always come. I promise. I’ll always be there." He presses a kiss to the part in Bucky’s hair. "Till the end of the line." 

"That’s pretty heavy talk, Steve," but Bucky’s smiling. "You gonna get me captured again?"

"Not on my life."

______

 

 

He’s there in the first hour of the museum’s opening. Late morning, the halls are filled with flocks of school kids and their tired, earnest teachers; overeager tourists clutching their headsets; the occasional couple, passing through slowly, heads ducked together at something silly in the portraits. And him. The crowds pass by as he sits motionless; they part around him like a river and resume their passage downstream, and he sits like a stone.

His legs still tingle from a morning jog. His hair is still damp from the shower. The smell of groceries still clings to his clothes, the smell of laundry to his hands. Ten o’clock and he’s done everything for the whole day. So, he sits.

The National Gallery is a good place for sitting. People trickle in and out and are content to look at the art instead of at him. Steve’s found [a new painting](http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/highlights/highlight12198.html) to study this week. A woman in a white dress stares out of the canvas. Her hair is as long and loose as her gown. Underfoot is a bearskin rug, the head still intact, teeth bared and glass eyes glaring. The woman’s flesh eyes are emptier than the bear’s. 

Won but lost.

All the things Steve had done, everything he’d fought for, and yet—

He catches a movement in the corner of his eye. His bench jostles as somebody sits and clears their throat. “How long are you planning to sit here?”

Steve mutters an apology and stands. After so long, even his legs are numb, and his feet prickle as he walks to the next room. But halfway there, something makes him look back.

The figure is still seated on the bench, but he’s not looking at the painting. He curls his mouth in half a grin and says, “Hey, Stevie.”

Steve’s chest goes as numb as his feet. 

"Y’know, I’m not sure how to take this," the man—Bucky— _Bucky?_ —goes on. “You recognized me under three layers of leather but not now? And I thought I’d figured out future fashion.”

"That would be your first goal," Steve says. It’s almost automatic, the quip. Somehow he stumbles back to the bench and sits. His eyes can’t stop tracing the details of his face, of Bucky’s face. There’s a scar on his cheek that wasn’t there before, and more lines around his eyes and jaw, not happy ones. His hair is trimmed into a style that’s probably modern. His clothes are sharp and well-fitted, and his arm, where it shows under one cuffed sleeve, is shiny and clean.

Steve’s fingers inch towards it and he pulls them back. “What happened?”

Bucky shrugs with a whir of machinery. “It’s just like that.”

"You don’t remember?"

He gives a tight grin. “Seems safer to keep it patchy, for now. I remember some things. Enough.” Another whir and he elbows Steve. “Enough to know you’d be here moping.”

"I am not moping."

Bucky points a look at the painting. “You are moping.”

Steve lets the exchange end; he couldn’t have kept it up if he wanted, his mind is so slow with—with this. Bucky. Sitting in front of him. Smiling. Teasing. The same but so clearly not. A thousand questions are floating in Steve’s frozen mind, but he settles for one. “Where have you been?”

Bucky’s smile fades. “I should’ve been here, Steve. I shouldn’t’ve left you here. After the Potomac, I wasn’t—” He rubs his left arm, gestures vaguely at his arm and his head. “I had to take care of a few things.”

Steve swallows. He lets himself hope. “And now?”

Bucky reaches a hand out to rest on Steve’s arm. His fingers are cool, his smile soft. “I have to take care of you.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I read this [Chronically Ill Steve Rogers](http://non-binary-bucky.tumblr.com/post/88698495965/chronically-ill-steve-rogers) meta, and based on that I tried to incorporate more of Steve's conditions into this piece. Though looking back I may have only managed to cover scoliosis and his respiratory problems, with a nod at deafness. But in part 3 where it refers to "his good side," that's meant to be the side with the non-deaf ear and the slightly higher shoulder. The combination of those two qualities means it's become the shoulder Bucky most often leans against, when he feels moved to lean. (This also means that, later, Steve finds himself leaning against Bucky's left side, metal arm around his back and metal fingers cupping his elbow, because it's the side he's most used to, even now.)


End file.
